Based upon everything else in the game being simplified, I think you only need to take the Control / See / Become once and it covers any animal in the sidebar.

The wording is a bit ambiguous, so I think it could be left to the GM/Player to decide. If the GM wants to allow full Ussuran Sorcery with less Advantages spent, allow all the animals. If the GM wants more XP to be spent, choose animals with the Power. Most sorceries require about 4-5 "Sorcery" Advantages to fully learn the art, whereas Avalon requires way more than that to max out the abilities.

I think for now, I will allow my Ussuran Sorcerer to use all the Animals for each Power, unless it feels overpowered :)

John

My understanding was that you picked one animal each time you gained a Gift linked to an animal power. That seemed more in line with the old 1e Ussuran sorcery and thematic to being a Lesson from Matuska to me. I could see her giving someone the ability to become a wolf to learn to help others (from being part of a pack), for example, but giving them the ability to turn into any animal seems less focused on it teaching anything (except maybe empathy in general?).

Its really up to your table and what feels right thematically to your group, I don't think the Gifts are particularly imbalanced if you allow any animal with each use.

Yeah, my undestanding about the Animal form is the same as Mars', in that you get one Animal each time you choose that particular Gift.  Especially after re-reading each of those Gifts, which say "choose an Animal" with a very strong suggestion of singular rather than plural.

Yeah, its limiting, but depending on which animal you can transform into, that can be a substantial boon.  After all, being able to talk to the mice in an area can be a substantial perk in terms of getting information given they're fairly common pests, and being able to turn into a bear or wolf in the midst of a fight shouldn't be overlooked either, to say nothing of being able to See through the eyes of any of the smaller, less obstrusive animals, such as cat, mouse, owl, or raven.

There's also the overriding theme that magic in this game always comes with a price, and part of the price of Dar Matushki is that the more magic you have, the greater the Restrictions on what you can do without drawing Matushka's ire.

I had a chance to ask Mike Curry how Dar Matushka was meant to work on Reddit. Here is his response:

In regards to Mother's Touch, the intent is that the sorcerer chooses 1 animal. You can turn into a wolf, or a cat, or a bird. If you can turn into anything you want, I feel like it makes things a little less interesting in a narrative sense. "I've got an animal for every occasion" doesn't seem as interesting to me as making a decision about whether or not you'll transform.

There's an argument to be made for the other direction, however -- maybe it's a more interesting choice to choose WHICH animal you will choose. If we had chosen this route, I would have more tightly constrained what the different animal forms represent and treated them similar to an Approach in Risks. Cat would have +2 dice to Hide, for example. A wolf would have +2 dice to Athletics. As it stands now, it's left purposefully open in terms of what an animal gains bonuses for ("if the form would be advantageous") because you purchase each form separately.

John

Also, being able to turn into any animal with a single purchase of the Sorcery Advantage feels like it pushs the character too much into the superhero direction.  My interpretation of Sorcery in 7th Sea is that it's supposed to be a tad on the creepy side (Porte especially) as well as a specialized tool, one that can't fit every situation.  Sorte probably comes the closest to being "universal" but it also comes with some pretty hefty setting-based drawbacks (women only, said women are little better than second-class citizens in their homeland), though in 1e it was also a lot more limited in what you could generally do until you hit Adept or Master.